Sounds like they think you're too good at your current role to promote. Not the worst thing in the world if you're adequately compensated for it. It's certainly

Sounds like they think you're too good at your current role to promote. Not the worst thing in the world if you're adequately compensated for it. It's certainly better than the alternative of lots of responsibility/stress but low pay. Have you expressed your desire to lead a team, though? I never did but kind of ended up as one by accident. I was an expert in a particular aspect of a large system and was asked to make an urgent change. It was fairly large and affected a lot of internal systems and I realised that delivering this in the timeframe was far beyond my capabilities as an individual, so I told them this and they gave me a small team. When this was delivered on time they gave me an even bigger project. But this was only possible because our org was expanding at the time... If your company isn't then there may not be any such opportunities coming up unless someone quits, so if it's very important to you then you might need to look at other roles. Although, while the recognition is nice in a way, the sort of "extra" things to do actually increased for me and I'm not sure the "errand boy" feeling is likely to get much better! I do have a bit more of an org chart above me...